Fully Absorbed

My minimal, difficult to maintain attention span took a sudden reversal.  I had been watching some YouTube's on religion, more anti than pro, of late, scrolling past anything that took more than 15 minutes.  Comments by the late Christopher Hitchens repeatedly captured my interest, so I proceeded to check his most prominent book, God is Not Great, from the library.  The transfer of an e-book electronically failed so I requested the print version which I began reading.  And reading. And reading some more.  About a third of the book, when my intent was a chapter a day for ten days.

He writes of a more global attrition, or maybe a wishful attrition that has not happened yet, unlike my focus on decline that has already occurred.  He takes the view that religious institutions with the discipline they impose on adherents generate evil, which they do.  They also generate art, literature, music, and intricate discussions.  My spin seems more that the experience of being there falls short of other options that can be pursued instead.

After interminable Hebrew School flashbacks while I sit at services in my own congregation, with a Rabbi feeding me strings of interAliyah Sound Bites, though not at all evil, it's good to have my mind challenged in this more profound way, not so much about the merits of the Judaism that I have inherited, but the idea of deity and its historical legacy that we make so many often unconvincing excuses to defend.

Perhaps even more importantly, I had begun to doubt if I had the capacity to focus on any ideas or undertakings without the use of a timer to keep me captured on what I was doing.  This reading went on for hours, only needing short breaks to better absorb what I had just learned.  I really do have the capacity to grant full attention and derive pleasure.  I wasn't sure before.

Super Sunday's Defector

Last week I gave a public seminar on Jewish attrition which is really a subset of religious attrition.  It takes many forms, and unless one is among those Church Centered people that Stephen Covey, z"l, so vigorously downgraded in his 7 Habits, we all probably have some element of this.   I've been on Federation's Do Not Call List for 25 years and I do not expect a solicitation today.  Indeed, many Federations and other fundraising organizations have written off their small donors as not worth the effort or the telephone earfuls that their contributions would bring.  I've not forsaken tzedakah, quite the opposite, just fired my agent for doing this in 1995 and brought this vital initiative In House.

I think the attrition from Judaism that we see now is really Leadership Generated Attrition, the just deserts of how people see themselves as being treated, whether accurate or not.  Of course those machers told each other how wonderful their leadership efforts were.  Defectors were by definition, inferior Jews or ingrates.  Probably not true then and not true now as their leadership clones who have taken up the baton look at how to make the best of their current circumstances.

For me, the experience violated some of the most basic needs of the Animal Kingdom.  We all devote our efforts to looking for food, avoiding predators, and reproducing.  I gathered food and a good deal of professional and personal satisfaction externally to the herd, found a fair number of predators from within, and had to protect one of my offspring.  Even looking at the herd for the security and opportunity it provides, the losers of the rut who are put in subservient positions may start seeking a different herd where they can flourish more effectively.  That's me.  That's a lot of people.  It's not everyone.  They'd have real tzuris if it were.  The disaffiliation composite speaks for itself.  The rut through which the people of title emerge will just have to engage smaller herds.

Hebrew School Flashbacks

Simchat Torah.  The Festival that transformed from my favorite to my least favorite over a lifetime.  Childhood:  Marching with Torah Scrolls, flags, and singing in the evening with a candy apple distributed at the end.  One of those red hard shelled confections that probably still exist but I've not seen in years.  The following day we got off from school, public school some years, Sunday Hebrew School if weekend yom tovim that year.  Hijinx continued with some kids bringing pistol facsimile  water guns, not the super soakers they have now, and tying the tzitzit of the ba-al tefiloh together as he davened musaf.  Torah reading would take a long time since everyone got an aliyah and at the Orthodox congregations a lot of adults came.

Moving on to college, Simchat Torah remained festive but at a different level.  Sure there was singing and dancing with the Hakafot.  But a bridge developed with the Soviet Jews as well.  Despite targeting Jews for religious suppression and identifying them on their state issued ID cards, the authorities always looked the other way on Simchat Torah.  Russian Jewish youth, the parents of those who make Tzahal function today, would assemble in droves for their annual display of their heritage.   It may have been the beginning of twinning, where Bat Mitzvah girls in America would identify and share their simcha with a girl in the Soviet Union.  But on Simchat Torah, we did that in a communal way.  Our University services were festive, but not nearly as festive as the city-wide gathering in a large public space with hundreds or even thousand participants.  While the mass emigration of Soviet Jews has been a good thing, we may have lost the revelry of Simchat Torah as their special day, and our special day, in the process, along with that important ideological achdut.

For me, that is where the inner joy of the occasion stopped.  I do not remember much from my residency days.  Maybe I was on call each year.  After relocating to my current town, the Conservative synagogue had a bimodal celebration.  Adults would gather in one place at about sundown for tefiloh.  The festivities were for the kids, sans any Torah reading at night.  There would be Happy Songs of ten words or less, probably the capacity of the parents as well as the children.  I took my children each year.  The next day I was often Torah reader which gave me a challenge.  Even without the kids, who mostly went to school, the songs were almost the Hebrew School musical cliches.  Guys:  I graduated.  They even gave me a certificate.  This was Hebrew School, the greatest invitation to Jewish attrition of my generation and that of my children.  No way do I want that experience.

Onward to my current shul.  We no longer have the bimodal child/adult events.  A diverse crew came at night, more adults in the morning.  For the last few years, our supply of children has metastasized to other communities where they are junior contributors.  We have only adults now.  But the processional retains the sounds of our insipid Hebrew schools, places that achieve minimalist identification with no capacity to have a song longer than ten words.  Don't sell the kids short.  "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" each have twice that.  The services are not nearly as long, particularly in the morning, as attendance totals less than 20 men.  The women at our congregation have their own Torah reading, though no single woman can read more than one aliyah.  Even Creation is divided among seven readers.

I am left with a lifetime of progressive atrophy, multifaceted affecting interest, ability, and challenge to excel.  Instead we get by ritually and have replaced solidarity with our Soviet brethren with a mere chewy caramel apple replacing the one with the red hard shell as the highlight of attendance.  We have attrition over my lifetime.  We deserve it.  To what extent I contributed to what is clearly a sour attitude, we can explore, I suppose.